1.  Look at us, hitting 40 Things two Fridays in a row. Whoop whoop!

2.  I’ll celebrate the win wherever I can get it.

3.  It’s been an interesting week in blog comments.

4.  No, silly, not the ones you see. These are comments that get filtered out before they reach the page.

5.  Let’s start with Jasper.

6.  Jasper was kind enough to let me know his minions hacked my website and extracted my databases. [insert evil laugh]

7.  I’m not exactly sure what my databases bring to the table but Jasper played it like a trump card.

8.  He then broke down his diabolical plan lest I fail to grasp the specific threat of having my reputation destroyed.

9.  Jasper vastly overestimates my reputation in the blogosphere. Unfortunate, really, since it seriously undermines his demand for $3000 in bitcoin within 72 hours.

10.  He even helpfully included information on how to obtain bitcoin. Talk about your full service extortionist.

11.  Then there’s a wide selection of erectile dysfunction drug offers.

12.  Annie Kittredge reached out to let me know my offer for a free keto cookbook expires soon.

13.  Willian Mingay chimes in with a rags to riches scheme called the magical Genie script.

14.  Cue a dozen more offers for erectile dysfunction drugs. I’d really love to know what landed me on these lists.

15.  About a week ago Edwardo threw his hat in the extortionist ring.

16.  It seems Edwardo speaks for “a group of highly qualified ethical hackers.”

17.  Oh, I see. Not just qualified but highly qualified.

18.  And ethical too? Well good gosh, that changes everything, Edwardo.

19.  $3000 in bitcoin must be the going hacker rate.

20.  Edwardo is bucking for criminal of the year, too, since his band of merry men offers a QR code for easy payment.

21.  And they say customer service is dead.

22.  Hey look, there’s a marketing message from an AI company.

23.  It takes serious chutzpah to send an artificial intelligence pitch to creative writers. Just saying.

24.  A lovely person named Jenny felt downright neighborly and sent a link to her intimate photos.

25.  And then you round that out with another batch of ED messages. No limp johnsons ’round these parts, I tell ya.

26.  That right there sums up my spam messages since March 7. Good times, right?

27.  What’s missing is the handful of messages in my trash.

28.  The first comes from ‘vpwkk’ and is a zillion words long, a string of phrases jumbled together starting with “jezebelle bond porno star” and ending with “green signature guitars.”

29.  There’s a whole lot of junk in there you can do without. Thank me later.

30.  Then ‘wrrqkt’ joins in with another treasure trove of trash.

31.  This extraordinary word vomit includes such gems as duck breast recipes, sex offender laws, naked download, narcotics anonymous, interior design, latex rubber, and Las Vegas Asian boxing championship as well as more XXX phrases than you’d reasonably think one could include in a comment.

32.  The next seven comments are more of the same, one long string of verbal gymnastics after another meant to trigger every search term and sidestep any filters.

33.  Gotta love the English language.

34.  I also seriously love my comment filters.

35.  This concludes my wrap up of behind-the-scenes blog comments for you.

36.  Seems a bit like the seedy underbelly of blogging now that I read back through it.

37.  I can’t for the life of me think of a quirky seedy underbelly saying. It must be getting late.

38.  Ooh! I almost had one there. Swiss cheese for brains makes for tough writing.

39.  I think I’ll hold onto the more entertaining spam comments. This feels like a good blog topic to revisit.

40.  Let’s hear it for tech warlords peddling bitcoin extortion schemes while pushing erectile dysfunction drugs for the masses. Can I get an amen?